


Like Walking Away In The Snow

by pockets_full_of_posies



Category: Barry (TV 2018), Bill Hader - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Depression, F/M, Flashbacks, Fluff and Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:20:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26629693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pockets_full_of_posies/pseuds/pockets_full_of_posies
Summary: I was inspired by the fic that I've linked.I was going through a very hard time medically and mentally.I couldn't get the story out of my mind.So I sat there and thought about it for a long while and then I just started making a different story, but not so different, around it in my mind. I thought about it for months, this other telling, until my brain got sick of me and made me write it down into this.Thank you for reading <3
Relationships: Barry Berkman/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 10





	Like Walking Away In The Snow

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [He Never Stays](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18427985) by [pennywife](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pennywife/pseuds/pennywife). 



A sharp knock at her door brought her out of her dream state.

She had gotten lost again. In a book that he said she should read. _The Funeral Party_. She remembered taking the worn copy of this book from his worn hands.

The title of it sent her searching. Someone somewhere had said of this book, _" 'The Funeral Party' explores two of the biggest 'accursed questions' of Russian literature—How to live? How to die?"_ That had frightened her. Why did he want her to read this? A shudder shot up her spine as the fog around her lifted.

She hoped it wouldn't be him at the door. She thought this might be the last time he would put up with her, if she couldn't talk about this book. He needed things from her that she could not give him sometimes. Not because she didn't want to, but because she just felt weary. From the way her mind could never focus. She could barely sit up in bed that morning. Her body's weary state was just another victim of her exhausted mind.

But she hoped it was him. When she was in his presence, everything seemed to become clear. Everything seemed to be in a sharp focus that she could never really put into the right words.

She slowly made her way to her front door and looked out of the peephole. His large frame loomed there in the close and faraway, the way that inverse glass makes everyone look. Large and intimidating, but also small at the same time. He seemed painted all in black. Hands in his pockets. Head down. Like a child who had been scolded for something he didn't do.

She turned the deadbolts and opened the door just a bit.

"Can I help you? Are you lost?" She always thought she was more clever than she was.

"Stop. Not today." He pushed the door open and walked in past her. Something was wrong. But she knew better than to ask.

Her apartment was small and open. There were no walls, just divisions of where things should be. Where people should be. Here is where we eat, here is where we sleep, here is where the books are kept.

He sat down on the couch, which faced the bed. The movers had placed it there, facing that way, when she first moved in. She had left it there.

She made her way to him. His shoulders strained against the black thermal he was wearing. She was in an old oversized t-shirt and a faded skirt. They seemed to be dressed as sad as they both felt.

She sat on the bed across from him, all criss crossed legs and bed head. Her eyes searched him, trying to find his eyes. They were hidden from her. That was how things had ended up. They could never seem to meet each others eyelines anymore. But the way he sat, his whole being radiated devastation. _He is isn't grieving. He is grief. He is within it._

Sorrow surrounded him and was him.

"Barry, what's wrong? Can I help you? What can I-"

He stood up and was an inch from her face in less than a second. His eyes were dark, his face was dark. _This man is out of his mind_

"Stop. Just, please stop." His nostrils flared and his tone was full of anger meant for someone else. But his voice was soft. His eyes were searching her face, looking for one place of peace. A place where he didn't have to talk about any of whatever it was that he was going through.

Tears pricked at the edges of her eyes. She lifted a hand to his face, a soft touch against his rough cheek.

A moment of understanding passed between them.

He placed his palm against her shoulder gently, and pushed her back onto the bed. He laid his broken, tired body down beside her. He slid an arm under her, another around her. He gathered her against his chest. Her face against his heart, his head in her hair. These small moments were the only comfort either of them knew. These were the soft times. The times they could forget and hold one another. The times that they could forget about the world and all of its frightening parts.

But they knew, always in the back of their minds, that the world would go on without them and in spite of them. It kept turning. And they would eventually have to get up and face it again. Sooner not later.

They were so quiet and still in these times.

He eventually came out of his haze and looked down at her in his arms. He ran his free hand along her arm, pausing at the goosebumps that appeared on her skin.

He put his hand to her chin and lifted her face to his. Her eyes were wide and unsteady.

He kissed her forehead, and then her cheek, and neck, and collarbone. His hands began to softly trail against her body.

She took this in, tried her best to make this a new memory. This was just so very unusual. This was like the old times. When they had first met, outside of some forgettable dive bar in Cleveland. Where that guy was trying to pin her up against the wall by the back door.

Barry was just walking by and saw what was happening. He had turned and paced down the alleyway like he owned the whole entire city. When the man who had her by her throat saw him, he fled. She had never seen a person move so fast. But in one second he was gone and in the next second she looked up and Barry was there. Looking down at her with a concern that she had never experienced before.

Now he was against her, she could feel him against her thigh. He fumbled with the hem of her skirt. But then he had had his hand up her leg, feeling every part of her skin, searching, until he found the waistband of her underwear. He pulled them down on one side, his palm holding them there while his fingers searched for her. He found her easily, like he had many times before. He pulled his hand away, looking at the shimmer of wetness on his fingertips.

She lifted her head to his ear. "I want you to." She pulled her face away quickly so that she could try and look into his eyes. But they were cast down. Always cast down and away from her now.

_Was love ever there? In his eyes? For her? For anyone? Or anything? Had anyone ever looked at him with love? Had she?_

Questions she knew she didn't want the answers to.

From what she could see of his face, he looked disgusted. Not at her. Never at her. He was disgusted with himself. Again. It was happening again. The bad times.

He suddenly shoved both of his hands up her legs and pulled her underwear down with enough force to tear one side of them.

He held her shoulder down with one hand and fumbled with his buckle with the other. And then he was inside her. His hips against hers. Their abdomens touching, and touching, and touching.

Amber Run's _I Found_ was playing softly somewhere in the distance, faintly coming in and out of focus. _Had she put that on?_ She couldn't remember. The weight of his body on hers was dismantling her thoughts.

He pressed himself inside her again and again, his hands on either side of her head. His right hand closed around the hair on the left side of her head, his grip was tight and absentminded. Her head leaned that way out of instinct. _If I turn this way, it will hurt less._

She turned her eyes up towards his face. He was looking straight ahead, focused on some distant thing in some distant part of her small apartment.

And that's when she realized she couldn't draw a breath. 

"Barry." her voice shaky and shallow. "I can't breathe."

He stopped. He looked down at her, his eyes hazy. His eyes were dead. They were dark and gone. They were gone away from her and from the whole world. She had only ever once seen his eyes go black like that. Go dead like that. Every part of her went cold.

_This man is dangerous. This man is going to kill you._

Then he blinked, small tears shaken out. His eyes were back in focus. They had come back from wherever he had just been, whatever nightmare he had just been reliving. The life within him regained control.

His movements within her and against her became more urgent. His hands searched her body, needing, looking. He lifted her shirt up and off of her, hands desperate against her skin.

He was searching for something she did not possess.

When his moment came, his eyes were towards the ceiling, searching. Welled up with tears about something she could never know.

The moment passed in silence for the both of them.

And then his weight was fully on her. His breathing fast and shallow.

"I hate it when you come here." Her voice was unsteady and raw.

His head hung down next to hers, his breathing slowing. His exhale cut at the skin on her neck. It was warm, but she shivered. Pinpricks on her skin, her ears ringing.

His voice was low, and still, and cold.

His voice was quiet. It was broken.

"Me, too." He pushed off and up and away from her. His weight was gone, but her lungs still felt compressed It was hard to breathe. She felt like she had that one winter, a long time ago. When she saw a pretty violence and walked toward it...

Her eyes lost their connection to the present and then she was there on her mother's porch, staring out at the snow that seemed like it would never stop falling. It had been falling for so long it was like it had always been there. There was no before. Just this white nothing, pieces of clouds slowly swirling in the air towards the earth.

She stood silently, motionless, afraid any slight movement she made might disrupt something larger that was happening all around her. The winter air was still and unmoving. She looked up and down the road. Nothing stirred. Everything was soft. But something felt off. She might have used the word sinister to describe it. Insidious. Maybe she would have used those words if her mind had been clear.

It was hard to breathe. Her chest was tight and everything felt heavy. But her mind felt light. Like maybe she might float away. 

These were the lowest temperatures they'd ever had in that little town. The news said it was record breaking. The news said people had died. The news said a little boy had wandered away and had never come home. She had gone to high school with that little boy's parents.

She lingered there on the cold bricks outside of the front door of her childhood home, barefoot, a t-shirt grazing the bare skin of her thighs. A fog surrounded her. She thought it was just in her mind, not real to anyone else but her. But there was no real way to tell.

In that moment her eyes went blurry and she took a step towards the place where the snow hadg athered itself into drifts at the base of the porch landing. Another step. And then her foot, then her ankle, then her calf were engulfed in the snow. A bitter shock rose up her body and it was like she had never felt anything before this moment. Everything was alive. Everything was sharp and soft and she couldn't separate the two.

Another step. Then another. Everything was suddenly so clear and in focus.

From behind her, a voice. Sudden and urgent and furious. _Are you crazy! Have you lost your mind? Get back inside the house!_ A hand on her shoulder, violently dragging her away from whatever she was heading towards...

The sound of metal clinking against metal brought her focus back into the present. She was still laying at the foot of her bed, her old t-shirt now covering her chest. It had been carefully placed there. The hem of her skirt had been pulled down and the pleats lay flat on the tops of her thighs. Her head was still turned to the side, a pool of tears had gathered between her eye and the bridge of her nose.

She turned and looked at him. His back was to her, him still fidgeting with his belt. It was new, the buckle deceptively hard to adjust. She quickly pulled the t-shirt over her head, suddenly very self conscious.

"Barry-"

He became still. "What?"

He turned to her and in that moment, in his eyes, she thought she understood what it could look like when hate radiated out of a person.

"I- I'm sorry. I don't, I'm just..."

His head stretched back and then hung low. He was all at once something mighty and crumbling. She thought of a poem she had read in college so many years ago. Of a once powerful king laid waste in the desert. A great leader that had been left to history and would be buried in the sand in time.

A sigh rose from deep within him.

He turned back to the couch and sat down. She noticed he hadn't even bothered to take his shoes off this time.

His arms rested on his thighs, his body pitched forward and low.

"You’re going through something. I don’t need to know."

His raised his head up enough to finally meet her eyes. His face looked like it had never known sleep. His eyes were both wild and still. She met him there, in that wild and still place. She held his gaze.

“I’m just saying I understand what it can be like-"

He shot up so fast that his elbow caught the edge of the little table next to the couch, knocking it over. A splinter bloomed in the wood where it hit the tile.

" _You understand exactly nothing._ "

But she did. She understood what it was to feel grief. Grief that consumed and destroyed. And she knew he did something that was both silent and unforgivable. She at least knew more than he would admit. Comments made to her here and there when he had one too many glasses of whiskey. Specks of dried blood behind his earlobes. The way his fingertips always smelled faintly of what she imagined gunpowder must smell like.

He slowly sat back down on the couch. She didn't think he even noticed that the side table was cracked and laying on the floor. Another forgotten thing in the wake of the deep violence that lived in some secret place within him. But always trembling at the very surface of his skin.

His head was in his hands.

She swung her legs off of the side of the bed and carefully approached him, how someone might approach a wounded animal. All slow movements and hushed tones. She sat gingerly beside him and lightly touched his shoulder. He flinched against her hand.

"Look, I'm sorry." He looked over to her, his eyes shimmering.

"It's ok. It’s going to be ok." She kept rubbing that spot between his shoulders where he held so much of his tension. But no matter how much she always tried to ease it away, it remained. _It will never go away_ , she thought.

"I don't want to upset you. But I feel like I always do. I just don't understand why you come here. Why do you always come here?"

"Why do you always open the door?"

She was startled by his response. She looked at this man, the dichotomy of him. His eyes were red and filled with ghosts. She thought he was the most vulnerable person she had ever met. And maybe the most violent.

He stood up and grew tall next to her.

"I have to go." He checked all of his pockets, making sure he had his keys and phone. They were there, as they always were. But it was a ritual that he couldn't give up.

She stood and followed him to her door.

"Will I ever see you again?" It was sweet the first time she said it, but now it was a depressing inside joke they shared.

"I hope not." Neither of them could ever work out if that response was sad, or funny, or wrong. But it had stuck.

He opened the door and stood in the space between inside and outside, his back against the doorframe. The reflection of the lights in the hallway flickered on his face. She stood in front of him, looking up into his eyes. His eyes that always seemed blue, but flashed gray now. Even his eyes couldn't tell the truth. The colors in them always seemed to be hiding.

He put his hand to her cheek. He left it there for a moment. She caught a faint smell there.

Something that smelled like copper. And violence. And last words

He turned and headed down the hallway, his form going from light to dark and back again as he passed under and through the sporadic lights that illuminated the passageway.

He walked away all slunk over. Hands in his pockets. Head down. He paused at the end of the hallway.

She started forward but stopped, her hand gripping the frame of her doorway. _This man is dangerous,_ she thought. She knew that.

She saw him lift his head. A deep breath seemed to straighten out his spine. His outline grew larger, and he hovered like that there at the end of the hall.

He was all at once sharp angles and soft edges. He was like wandering away in the snow. But this time there was no one there to pull her back towards safety. So she took a step out. And then another...

**Author's Note:**

> I was inspired by the fic that I've linked.  
> I was going through a very hard time medically and mentally.  
> I couldn't get the story out of my mind.  
> So I sat there and thought about it for a long while and then I just started making a different story, but not so different, around it in my mind. I thought about it for months, this other telling, until my brain got sick of me and made me write it down into this.
> 
> Thank you for reading <3


End file.
